University Archives News

We received a wonderful piece of Willamette History this month – a bag and memorabilia given to Alumni Relations from Marian Pope.
Marian entered Willamette University in 1932 living in Lausanne Hall. She meticulously calculated her every purchase into a notebook and saved each receipt. It is a wonderful look into the life of a Willamette freshman in 1932.

In addition to living in Lausanne, Marian was a member of the Daleth Teth Gimel Hebrew letter society. Daleth Teth Gimel, organized at Willamette in 1929, was Willamette’s first national social organization for undergraduate women. In 1939 the name was changed to Dalda Dau Gamma.

Come to the Archives to find other pieces of the Willamette student experience.

In 1942, ten Willamette students were forced into internment camps because of their Japanese ancestry. Students Interned highlights the stories of those ten students who were each born in the United States and were in the midst of their studies when their internment notices came. Reiko Azumano, Kenji Kurita, Kate Kyono, Tom Oye ‘41, Henry (Hank) Tanaka, Hideto (Hide) Tomita, Maye Oye Uemura, Edward Uyesugi, Taul Watanabe ‘41, and Yoshi Yoshizawa were active members on the Willamette campus, participating in organizations such as Glee, YMCA, and writing for the student newspaper, The Collegian. Most of these men and women continued their education after internment, earning degrees in law, medicine, politics, and sociology. This exhibit features photographs, news articles, books, and yearbooks showcasing each of the students.

Students Interned is on display in the Mark O. Hatfield Library on the Willamette University campus. Also on exhibit through March is Roger Shimomura: An American Knockoff at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. Roger Shimomura is an accomplished artist born in Seattle who spent part of his childhood in an internment camp during WWII.

Zena Forest and Farm

Willamette University Archives is participating in the Willamette Heritage Center’s annual invitational exhibition, Made in the Valley.

The Archives exhibit, Zena: Production and Education in the Eola Hills highlights the history of Zena forest and farm, located just west of Salem, from its first settlers to its conservation and educational use today.

Made in the Valley features exhibits from area heritage organizations exploring manufacture and production in the Willamette Valley. The exhibit opens Friday, January 16th and runs through Saturday, March 14th, 2015.

The Roger Hull Research Files on Pacific Northwest Artists are now available.

Roger Hull taught courses on Renaissance, American, and Modern art at Willamette University from 1970 to 2010. He also helped establish the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, which opened in 1998. Hull curated a series of retrospective exhibitions on Pacific Northwest artists and created monographs in conjunction with those exhibitions. This collection comprises Hull’s research materials gathered for these exhibitions and monographs. Materials include photographs, correspondence, interview recordings and videos from artists such as Constance Fowler, Carl Hall, Henk Pander and Jan Zach.

49 scrapbooks within the Willamette University scrapbook collection are now available for viewing. These scrapbooks were compiled by Willamette University students, faculty and staff. Student scrapbooks feature photographs of life on campus, letters home to family, cards from friends, and souvenirs collected from memorable events. Largely covering the 1910s to 1930s, the student scrapbooks highlight student experience in a unique and personal way. A scrapbook from 1893 documents a group of Willamette Students as they climbed and camped at Mount Hood.

The residence hall scrapbooks of Baxter, Lausanne, Lee and York contain photographs and programs from annual events. Faculty scrapbooks highlight the work of piano professor James Ralph Dobbs, and the 1913 summer school held in Joseph, Oregon.

Find out about all of the available scrapbooks via the Willamette University Scrapbook finding aid.

Archives staff recently uncovered correspondence from Willamette’s 6th President, Reverend Nelson Rounds. Get a sense of travel difficulties in 1868, the cost of transporting luggage, and talk of the Panama Canal. Board of Trustees member, Gustavus Hines wrote multiple letters urging Rounds to accept the Willamette Presidency. Rounds’ letters with his son-in-law give a little insight into why Rounds’ presidency was short-lived. These letters, as long with Rounds’ contract of hire, are now digitized and transcribed, so you can view them from anywhere.

Digitization is complete! Willamette University’s long running newspaper, the Collegian, is now available digitally and fully keyword searchable. With unprecedented access to history at your fingertips, what will you search for?

Beginning in November 2013, over 100 years of Collegian issues were carefully processed in-house, including unbinding bound volumes of the Collegian, taking an average of 40 minutes to carefully remove the binding. We hired an experienced firm to digitize the Collegians. Over a century of Collegian data was then uploaded to the Academic Commons so the public can search across all of the digitized materials on the web. The Collegian is now searchable, and browsable, all the way back to its first issue in 1875.

The Paul Wynne Journal is a compilation of 20 short videos documenting Paul Wynne’s struggle with AIDS. It aired on San Francisco television between January and June 1990.

Paul Wynne was a 1965 graduate from Willamette University, a U.S. Army veteran, and a journalist. While at Willamette, he served on the yearbook staff, was a member of the Willamette University Players, the lead actor in several theater productions, and wrote two class songs used in Freshman Glee. Wynne was also a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. In 1969, he moved to San Francisco to work as an entertainment contributor, receiving an Emmy in 1981 for outstanding achievement in commentary and analysis.

In 1987, Wynne was diagnosed with AIDS. He decided to share his story and raise awareness for the disease through video segments to be aired on local news stations. Segments of the Paul Wynne Journal began airing on January 11, 1990. The final segment, on June 20, 1990 served as the opening for the San Francisco AIDS conference. Paul Wynne died on July 6, 1990. He was 46 years old.

The Charles E. Larsen Chemawa Indian School collection, recently added to the Archives, provides a unique look at the Chemawa Indian School and Northwest Native American history. Charles Larsen, being of Chinook descent, was a Chemawa student from 1893 to 1902. He then spent 31 of the next 44 years working at Chemawa as the assistant clerk, dairyman, disciplinarian, band instructor and athletics coach until 1946. Larsen’s goal while working at Chemawa was to document the school’s valuable history.

The bulk of this collection consists of the Chemawa history that Larsen wrote. The collection also includes newspaper clippings, correspondence, photographs, handbooks, and graduation lists compiled by Larsen throughout his time working at Chemawa, as well as his time working with the Klamath, Siletz, and Tulalip Indian Agencies in Oregon and Washington. Larsen’s typewriter, on which he typed much of his work, is also part of his collection.

Check out the Finding Aid to learn more about the collection, or come visit the Archives to discover Larsen and early Chemawa history.

What will you search for?

Have you ever wondered what was written in the first Collegian? What were students’ concerns in the 1910s, 1940s, or 1980s? What did Blitz look like before he was Blitz? Soon, those answers will be just clicks away!

Now, you can find some of those answers in the new exhibit on the second floor of the Hatfield Library. History at Your Fingertips is in place to honor the upcoming reveal of the digitized Collegians and Wallulahs. This fall, both the Collegian newspaper and the Wallulah yearbook will be available via the Archives’ website, will be keyword searchable, and will provide a level of access to Willamette University history never before possible.

The History at your Fingertips exhibit features themes from student life, student protests, athletics, and Lausanne Hall. Get a sense of what articles your search will pull up, and what treasures you might find: from articles on the haunting of Lausanne Hall; to advertisements for typewriters; to stories of students riding their horses to class in the 1800s. A wealth of Willamette history will be just clicks away.